"Provides an entertaining, illustrated exploration of manufacturing tricks, ingredients, and materials for common and extraordinary items"--Back cover.

Poorly Made in China is the narrative account of an American who helped facilitate China's booming relationship with the US. The book details compelling and, at times, alarming accounts of seven distinct US-China relationships that the author has managed. The author addresses a disturbing trend he refers to as quality fade the deliberate and secretive habit of widening profit margins through a reduction in the quality of materials. US importers usually...

The story of the author's nine-month-long journey to build a toaster from scratch--from his local appliance store to remote mines in the UK to his mother's backyard, where he creates a crude foundry--aims to help the reader reflect on the costs and perils of our cheap consumer culture.

"Manufacturing jobs, once the backbone of the modern US economy, have declined over recent decades, darkening opportunities for middle-class advancement. The same trend has occurred in many countries, from Europe to Japan, China, and South Korea. To return manufacturing employment to its former glory, many countries have adopted import barriers and "industrial policies." For the most part, those approaches have been misguided. In this book, Robert...

"When jobs can move anywhere in the world, bosses have no incentive to protect either their workers or the environment. Work moves seamlessly across national boundaries, yet the laws that protect us from rapacious behavior remain tied to national governments. This situation creates an all-too-familiar "race to the bottom," where profit is generated on the backs of workers and at the cost of toxic pollution. In Out of Sight, Erik Loomis-a historian...

This basic source for identification of U.S. manufacturers is arranged by product in a large multi-volume set.